Why did slavery expand in the south but not in north?

Answer 1

All European colonial powers brought over or created slaves from the native populations in every country they went. The same was true of the United States.

Originally both northern and southern slaves came from a wider variety of backgrounds including, Africans, Asians and poor Europeans brought over under the model of indentured servitude. In this model "theoretically" a servant who could not afford transportation to the new colonies was brought by a master to the colony where (s)he would eventually be able to pay for his/her freedom through service to that master. Sometimes the masters honored this agreement but all too often the master would not honor the worth of the work provided and keep the servant in perpetual servitude which is also known as slavery. Therefore slavery once existed in both the northern and southern colonies and originally it was not so heavily based on those of African ancestry.

However, thanks to a large puritan population in the northern colonies--many of whom believed in doing your own work to show that you are God's chosen people (piety)--the north never developed as many slaves as the south. That is not to say that the slaves didn't exist it's just that they didn't exist in the numbers they did in the south.

Slavery completely died out in the north because it was the north that primarily fought the Revolutionary War with the British. Wherever the British Army went it freed any slave that could escape to its line. This was a dual effort to increase troops for the British and destroy the economic foundation of the United States. In an effort to curb this, the northern states began offering freedom to slaves and compensation to slave owners that freed their slaves to fight for the United States. After the war was over slavery was pretty much dead in all northern states except New Jersey and when the next generation of northerners eliminated legal slavery all together the motives were a mix of ethics, piety, morality, practical economics, fear of increasing the minority populations and the fact that the war had already striped all of the previous slave owners of their slaves and power.

On the contrary the southern colonies did not have to fight the British much during the revolutionary war and both prior to and after the revolutionary war the south had an economic system that was based on rice and then cotton--labor intensive crops. The southerns also had a culture that didn't have near the work ethic of the more puritan north* so it needed more slaves to do the work for it. The south also had a problem with malaria, which was introduced to the Americas by colonialist. As such African laborers were sought after because people of African decent were more likely to be resistant to malaria than members of any other race. The combination of the southern labor-based economy, lack of work ethic in the southern colonialist population, and presence of malaria led the southern colonies to quickly abandon indentured servitude in favor of outright slavery of Africans which unlike the white slave owners could work harder without getting sick from the malaria. Looking at the Mason-Dixon Line it pretty much matches the line of demarcation as to how far north malaria could be spread by misquotes. Farther north of the Mason-Dixon Line the temperature is too cold in the winter for malaria to complete it's life-cycle in the mosquito before the cold kills both the mosquito and the malaria parasite.

The slave traders knew nothing of genetics** but they did know that a large portion of blacks could stay healthier, and therefore do more work, than other races in the malaria ridden south so they imported blacks from Africa and then kept them in holding pins until the ones that were not resistant to malaria died from the disease. They then had a "crop" of resistant black slaves to sell to southern slave owners.

The proliferation of slaves in the south as compared to the north, that has freed its slaves, means that the south now has a population of blacks that out number whites. This creates more fear in whites over a potential black uprising so they become more and more brutal in an effort to keep the blacks "in their place" this only serves to make the whites have more reason to fear an uprising and thus the paranoia grows and so does the brutality in an ever worsening cycle of violence, fear, and hatred. This was only curbed with the civil war when southerners had the North to worry about and eventually the end of slavery in the former Confederate states.

Also in the south slave holders (only 1/4 of southern whites) had a lot of power because of the ownership of slaves.*** As such the slave owners wished to expand slavery into the western territories to expand their wealth and power. Many even had visions of a great slave empire that would extend around the Caribbean Sea into Cuba, as well as Central and South America. They though that would be the most powerful empire on Earth controlling most of the World's trade. This ideology led to the war with Mexico and eventually to the acquisition of Texas. However, the newly elected Republicans led by Lincoln--although he did not, before the war, believe slavery could be eradicated in the southern states--saw slavery as an abomination and were not about to let slavery spread to the western territories this lead to the southern slave holders dragging their states into a war with the north.

*The phenomenon of cultures that are closer to the equator being more present hedonistic and thus "more lazy" than cultures that are farther away from the equator which tend to be more future oriented and thus more "industrious" occurs everywhere and is not isolated to the United States or a relic of the past. youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg

**The reason African populations are resistant to malaria is genetic and is because populations in Africa developed a recessive sickle cell trait that in the heterozygous form prevents malaria form infecting red blood cells without killing the blood cell instantly. This cell death then prevents the parasite from being able to use the blood cell as a host stopping its ability to reproduce and spread. However, if a person has a homozygous combination of the gene that individual will have sickle cell disease and those without a recessive allele will have "normal" blood cells that are susceptible to malaria.

23andme.com/health/Sickle-Cell-Anemia-Malaria-Resistance/

***This imbalance of power was the major reasons northerner white solders joined the war, "to protect the 'Union". To them the "Union" was formed on, and embodied, the idea of "one man, one vote" (although it only applied to white men). In the south slave owners had gained power over others including none slave whites because of their ownership of slaves. This was included in the Constitution of the United States as the 3/5ths Compromise which calls slaves 3/5th of a person. This is important because House Membership and Electoral Votes are assigned to states by population. States decide there own voting laws so when southern states only allowed wealthy, white, males to vote the few that were able to vote had the voting power of the entire free population of their state including women and poor that were not allowed to vote as well as 3/5ths of the slave population. This Oligarchical caste power structure that the southern slave owners perpetuated in the south did not sit well with the average northerner and the fact that the southern slave owners refused to except a president legally elected by majority vote only served to support the notion that the south wanted the entire United States to be an Oligarchy ruled by a minority elite class (as in the south) rather then the democratic-republic of the "Union" where each [white] man was equal. The taking away of slaves from the Confederate states then was more of a elimination of the Confederate caste elite's source of power (their slaves) rather than a rejection of slavery because Union slave states like Kentucky were allowed to keep their slaves until the 13th and 14th amendments were passed.

Two final notes:

Slavery in name other than "slavery" legally existed for many years prior to and after the civil war throughout the USA in the from of systems such as "indentured servitude" or company tactics like those of the coal and railroad industries that made their employees constantly in debt to the company and only paid employees in "company coin" to ensure an individual's continued and constant labor for well under market price.

For those that say the Civil War was not about slavery you should look at each state's succession speech and the ideas the Confederacy was supporting as the reason for succession and foundation of their "new government." There is not one that says anything other than slavery as a reason.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. " --Mississippi Succession Speech

"The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

--Alexander Stevens (vice president of the confederacy)

...And remember the South mounted the first attack and fired the first shots.